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NASA Wins Two Webby Awards for Internet Excellence

The Cassini and NASA sites.

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA has received two Webby awards for excellence
on the Internet. NASA's main Web site, http://www.nasa.gov, won the
People's Voice award for best government Web site. The Cassini mission
Web site, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov, received a Webby award for
best science site.

The People's Voice award is the second for NASA's Web site, which also
won in 2003. More than 500,000 people cast votes this year.

"We're extremely happy to be honored by the Internet community this way,"
said Brian Dunbar, the content manager for http://www.nasa.gov, at
NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We've always tried to focus the site
on giving the public what they're looking for in an engaging and
compelling way. Combined with some of the highest customer-satisfaction
ratings in the government, this award tells us we're on the right track."

Judges from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which
sponsors the Webbys, selected the Cassini site for the top honor in the science category.

"The Cassini Web site is the door to the science and technology of the
mission to Saturn, contained in hundreds of thousands of pages," said
Alice Wessen, manager of Cassini public engagement at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The site houses all the latest news, science
findings and images Cassini returns as it orbits Saturn. The public can
see every picture within eight hours after it's beamed down from the spacecraft."

NASA's Web site, which received 120 million visits in 2008, offers the
public the latest news, mission coverage and multimedia from the agency's
scientific research, technology development and exploration efforts. Visitors
can surf thousands of images from throughout the universe, watch live
video from the International Space Station or read more than a dozen blogs
written by agency employees.

In the last year, the NASA Web team has expanded its presence into social media,
creating an official NASA channel on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/nasatelevision,
multiple Twitter feeds led by @NASA, and mission pages on Facebook and MySpace.
Since NASA astronaut Mike Massimino began twittering via @Astro_Mike on April 3,
he has gained more than 175,000 followers. NASA was recognized in February with a
Shorty award for its @marsphoenix Twitter presence, which was written in the
"voice" of the spacecraft.

NASA's Web team also was among the honorees for Rich Media/Advertising for its
multimedia commemoration of NASA's 50th anniversary, http://www.nasa.gov/50years.
The feature, hosted by the robot Automa, includes an interactive news conference
with the original Mercury astronauts, music from across the decades and an
"appearance" by renowned astronomer Carl Sagan.

On Feb. 2, NextGov.com cited NASA's popular homepage as one of five federal
government agencies employing best practices in Web 2.0. Socialgovernment.com
also recognized the agency as among the best in federal government using Twitter,
YouTube and social media.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency
and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science
Mission Directorate, and designed, developed and assembled the orbiter. JPL is managed
for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.